Bahnsen Knights is an interesting visual novel that leans heavily on pulp fiction storytelling while giving players the illusion of choice. While the game is quite short, it’s a good recommendation for a player wanting a gripping narrative set within a late 80s aesthetic.
I may be a child of the 90s, but I’m familiar with the PC home computer adventure games of the late 80s and early 90s. By that, I mean the likes of text-based games like Oregon Story and Maniac Mansion. These games utilized crude 2D graphics while encouraging players to make simple, often binary, decisions that offered the illusion of branching narratives that often lead to the player’s demise. That said, the demand for these simple, text-based adventure games is less prominent in 2024.
Visual novels often break into the mainstream when they shock or surprise audiences. Doki Doki Literature Club is a great example of this: Many folks, myself included, were goaded into playing it because a “friend” encouraged us to play it or because we saw a streamer playing it. Its price point (free) helped a bit, too, but when I think back to how folks discussed and evaluated the game, they often pointed to its shock value and fourth-wall breaking meta thematic as a reason to play it. Its writing, music, and direction all took a back seat despite those three elements being key metrics of which we evaluate games of the genre.
Bahnsen Knights is the most recent edition to the lineup of text-based adventure games. While it isn’t new thanks to its October 2023 PC release, it releases January 17 (today!) on the PS5. It’s the third title in LCB Game Studios’ Pixel Pulps series, all of which are bite-sized text-based adventures that blend late 80s home computer graphics with pulp fiction, thrills, and chills.
In early January, I was sent a copy of Bahnsen Knights to review on my PS5. In the nearly three hours it took to complete the game, I was mostly impressed by its gripping narrative, gritty visuals, and grungy soundtrack. Its nostalgia bomb that was its art direction was not enough to distract from its brevity and illusion of choice from its interactive adventure.
Must of the game is textual in nature, lending support to the idea of Bahnsen Knights being a nostalgia-fueled visual novel over anything else. I was Boulder, the undercover agent posing as the newest recruit to the Bahnsen Knights. The Knights were a religious cult led by a car salesman-turned-egomaniacal messiah known as Toni. In a world torn apart by tornadoes and storms, the Knights in their Sierras underwent route exorcisms to dispel tornadoes and partook in highway robbery to secure valuables.
Boulder’s story is told through internal monologues and simple interactions with the other Bahnsen Knights. As I paged through each screen of dialogue, I could envision Boulder’s internal tension between “playing the part” of a lost soul attempting to find meaning in the wake of his daughter and wife’s “death” all the while gathering evidence of the Bahnsen Knights’ wrongdoings to ultimately take them down.
To that end, Bahnsen Knights tells an incredibly compelling story. The text only told me so much that was happening in the world while leaving the rest up to my imagination. Everything left unsaid by Boulder, Toni, and the remainder of the characters crept into my mind as I envisioned their tense interactions and feverish actions in their bleak reality.
Not all of the game was simply paging through text, however. Some of the chapters involved a simple single-input minigame such as a timed hunt for clues or a weaving through cars to outrun a tornado. These minigames broke up the otherwise text-heavy adventure. Not all of these minigames were necessary for progression, meaning that the game presented opportunities for mildly branching paths. In some cases, an unsuccessful attempt led to my gruesome and bloody demise. Failing to complete other minigames meant that I would simply miss out on a clue that could give me just a little more fuel to survive and understand who I am up against.
These branching paths are interactive but they didn’t completely connect to the idea of instituting a fluid story of multiple endings. As I said, most of the “incorrect” choices led to Boulder’s death rather than something deeper, like a “good” ending or a “bad ending.” This meant that attempting to replay the game to complete any optional objectives I missed in an earlier run was meaningless; the outcome would remain the same so long as I did the bare minimum to progress the game.
It’s unfortunate that Bahnsen Knights lacks depth in its narrative progression department because of how well its existing setup of minigames and decision trees offer the potential for multiple endings. The lack of variety here offers less incentive for players to continue picking at the seams to unravel the game’s secrets (of which there really are many). If I had discovered that there were reasons to get a different ending, I would have taken that opportunity to retrace my steps to try to complete each and every mini game. Instead, all I got was a handful of unlocked pictures and PlayStation Trophy Achievements, both of which are sufficient but not as rewarding as getting the big picture of LCB Game Studio’s world.
The art direction and pixelated screens of Bahnsen Knights are excellent, relying on four-colored fixed palettes to highlight important elements while playing with shadows. Again, Bahnsen Knights utilizes pulp fiction thematics to illustrate hardboiled detective work and blue-collar crime, so the use of cyan against shades of magenta easily draws the eye away from minutia. Some might find these color scheme and aesthetic to be jarring; I found it to be nostalgic, yet gripping. The soundtrack worked wonders in driving that nuanced grittiness home, too.
As I mentioned at the start of this review, I spent nearly three hours playing Bahnsen Knights. This is because I was able to complete the game in its entirely in around two hours and forty five minutes because I had opted to go back and attempt to complete each of its achievements. If I hadn’t gone back, I would have stopped at the 2-hour mark. This means that the average player should expect something around two hours to complete the game’s story, most likely a little more than that if you want to slowly read through its text or return to complete its minigames for the sake of full completion.
I want to drive home the fact that I’m not against visual novels by any means. They can be excellent afternoon adventures – something to play on a lazy Sunday while you’re waiting for laundry to finish drying or on the train home from work. If you recall my reviews of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus and Sunday Gold, you should know that there’s great value in storytelling if that storytelling offers players a sense of agency in the game’s textual world or provides a sense of completion. Bahnsen Knights completes its tale in short order but lacks the profound impacts of players interacting with Boulder’s world.
Bahnsen Knights is an interesting visual novel that leans heavily on pulp fiction storytelling while giving players the illusion of choice. While the game is quite short, it’s a good recommendation for a player wanting a gripping narrative set within a late 80s aesthetic.
A review copy of Bahnsen Knights was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
